Belief isn’t knowledge

The worst sort of misinformation may be conveyed in these pages if one chooses one’s words. There is not a shred of evidence for a truly worldwide flood, not since people have inhabited the planet, despite the anecdotal assertions of various ancient writings. The “Four Humors” were a concept from ancient philosophy, not science. Ditto the flat-earth model. Errors of philosophy do not constitute proof or demonstration of anything except the developing sense humankind has of its place in the cosmos.

It is not possible to fit Earth’s geology into the supposed timeframe of biblical literalists. Those people are of necessity, by definition if you will, catastrophists, and their views are “wrong” philosophy having nothing whatever to do with science.

The complement to such ideas, geologically, is uniformitarianism, equally “wrong” on its own. But some interplay between the two ways is a pretty good descriptor of geologic changes over time.

“Catastrophic” changes punctuate the slow and steady movements of the planet’s surface. It takes both kinds of activity to produce the continents, the mountains and other terrain that actually exist. All action, of whatever kind, prompts corresponding reaction. (Now that’s science.) Much of Barack Obama’s presidency constituted a catastrophe in the eyes of many people, and we are now witnessing the reaction. But we’re still a long way from equilibrium.

STANLEY G. JOHNSON

Little Rock